


Buzzcut Season

by avoidingavoidance



Series: Pure Heroine [4]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - War, Amputee!Marco, M/M, blatant Vonnegut abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2014-01-19
Packaged: 2018-01-05 05:26:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avoidingavoidance/pseuds/avoidingavoidance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(I remember when your head caught flame, it kissed your scalp and caressed your brain. Well, you laughed, "Baby, it's okay. It's buzzcut season anyway.")</p><p>(Modern AU) The 104th company of the US Armed Forces Army Division is home to many strange creatures. The affectionately dubbed “Levi Squad” exceptionally so. The ten best of the best, under the command of Sergeant Levi himself. Being the best at what they are, how could they possibly be normal? Especially with the threat of the 96 looming over their heads.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> i would like to apologize in advance

The 104th is a collective of truly strange, somewhat idiotic motherfuckers, hand-picked by their own personal Papa Smurf. Is that allowed? Generally not, but if you ever met Levi you’d let him rearrange your troops instead of your face too. 

They’re a tight-knit group, and you’d be hard-pressed to find one without the rest. Some more so than others. For example, Eren, Armin, and Mikasa are the truly inseparable trio. Eren is reckless, Armin is a (pretty deceptively terrifying) tactician, and Mikasa… well, let’s just say that if Mikasa Ackerman is the last thing you see before you die, you probably had a pretty fucked up life.

Sasha and Connie are jokers, but don’t take that to mean they’re not to be feared. There’s a rumor going around the barracks that Sasha once ran out of ammo while she was solo and in deep, so she fashioned herself a bow and arrow and fought her way back to the resupply. She didn’t talk much for a few days after that. No one asks about it.

Jean and Marco are something else. Jean’s something of a savant with a rifle; when he holds his breath and steadies his scope, it’s like all of time stops around him. And Marco, he’s just fucking invincible. He once dragged a broken leg around for three days making sure all of his squadmates made it back before falling over, as if his concern splinted a fucking disgusting open break just long enough to save everyone around him. Really, it was nasty. They say one of the noob medics almost puked on him.

The last three are Reiner Braun, Bertholdt Hoover, and Annie Leonhardt. No one really knows anything about them, except that once Thomas tried to knock Annie for being a midget and he went missing for two days. Afterwards, he showed up in the barracks one day with his clothes on backwards and a haunted look in his eyes. He denies all claims of this, and no one has the balls to ask Annie about it. As for the other two, they’re fucking giants, man. Reiner is a beast of a human, and while Bertholdt may be sweaty, you do not want to see him when he’s pissed. They say the sweating is a fighter’s response, to make him slippery and hard to grab. Like butter on a boxer or something.

As for Levi, their mother goose, no one fucking dares spread rumors about him. The last guy that tried it ended up with a broken nose and cleaning duty for a _year_. Or something.

Yeah, they’re a squad of lunatics, but realistically, what better place is there than a war for looney tunes? They’re more solid than any other group, essentially a well-oiled machine by definition. 

That’s why the head commander of their district, Erwin Smith, decided to use them as a recon squad. 

The day they head out on their first mission, they’re up before the wakeup and on their way out, but somehow everyone in the camp still watches them leave. 

“Alright, assholes,” Levi begins, crossing his legs. “Listen up.”

It’s still too early to form human language, so the squad just turns their eyes toward their fearless leader. 

“We’re just doing recon. No spec ops shit, no heroism,” Levi looks pointedly at Eren, “just scouting. Erwin wants to know what’s going on downstream, so our job is to find out and come back in one piece.”

The squad nods their heads, Jean rubbing his eyes a little. They drive in silence for a while, Armin definitely not falling asleep on Mikasa’s shoulder, until they hit a deep supply zone a few hours later.

Reiner and Bertholdt jump out first, moving to refuel their vehicle, while the rest of the team move wordlessly to their individually assigned tasks.

Levi stays in the vehicle, opening a check-in video chat with Erwin.

“We’ve landed at resupply,” he says, removing his helmet to run a hand through his already-sweaty hair. Fuck this climate. “Tell me again what I’m looking for.”

He already knows. He just wants to know what the higher-ups have “edited” into their task sheet.

“You know, Levi,” Erwin says, shuffling some papers on his desk. “Suspicious activities. Evidence of grassroots. Civil unrest. Anything out of the ordinary.”

“Am I supposed to believe that anything in this war is within the ordinary?”

They make eye contact, and like a challenge, Levi holds it, unblinking. 

As if to prove his point, a blast comes from nearby (far too close for comfort) and Levi is immediately on his feet and out of the truck, ducking back into his helmet and taking cover. Sharp eyes take in the scene; a bunch of his best, hard-wired to respond like animals to sudden noises, are sprawled in various cover positions around the empty center of the resupply, where a huge plume of smoke and sand rises toward the sky.

“IED!” Marco calls from somewhere, poking his head up just enough to make eye contact with Levi. 

Levi looks around and sees no suspicious individuals, and no casualties. He creeps out from behind the van, spotting Bertholdt in the process of cutting off the gas to the pump. “Recover!” he orders, and his troops do so, carefully and efficiently clearing the area. After they do so, and Levi has thoroughly whipped the garrison in charge of securing the resupply, he returns to his call with Erwin. “That,” Levi sighs, sinking into his seat. “That is ordinary, Erwin.”

The commander doesn’t object to the drop in formality. He doesn’t argue Levi’s point, either. They disconnect after a few moments of silence and Levi confirming that there were no casualties.

That is ordinary these days.


	2. Panic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean read _Slaughterhouse Five_ once. He thinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the short lame chapters right now, longer ones will come when i'm done throwing ~*~super dramatic cliffhangers~*~ at you guys

Life continues as ordinary. Jean thinks the words were, “ _So it goes_ ,” but high school was a long fucking time ago.

(It wasn’t.)

If he could bring himself to talk about it, he’s sure Marco would give him that sad smile and say “ _Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt._ ”

Neither of them would mention the tattoo bearing these words high on Marco’s thigh, just too high for it to be proper that Jean knows every line, every little spot that’s just barely more faded than the rest, every freckle struggling to break free under the surface.

Jean sighs and leans his head back, but immediately regrets it when the MRAP gives a jolt and his skull cracks against the metal side. With an annoyed ‘ _tch_ ,’ he looks at his comrades, everyone eerily silent. No one wants to fucking be here. Recon missions are horrible, and everyone knows it; for normal squads, they’re just a fucking death mission. A culling.

Good thing they’re not ordinary, he guesses.

He turns his head to look at Marco, who is wearing a somewhat pained expression as he studies his gun. Jean swears one day he’ll look at Marco and there won’t be a gun in sight. No guns, no uniforms, no precious dog tags swinging from their tense necks, no more fucking hot sand in every crevice. Maybe some flowers, or a wall with real paint on it. It feels weird to live in a world that looks eerily like desert M*A*S*H. 

Marco notices him staring out of the corner of his shrewd eyes and turns to smile at Jean, but the warmth doesn’t quite reach the chilly sadness nestled deep within. Jean doesn’t return the gesture. He just kind of feels like crying.

-

MRAP stands for Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (vehicle). The thing about the army is that they’ll name anything three-plus randomly assorted nouns just to give it an acronym. It’s like they think acronyms are black magic, and anything with a long enough acronym will be immune to whatever the Bad Guys throw at them. 

Now, MRAPs were built to withstand IEDs. They’re insanely bottom-heavy, so they’re pretty rad at what they do. They’re like vaguely speedier tanks. And they worked, for many years. 

Until the other guys started to figure out that they could jump IEDs and hit the MRAPs where it hurts.

-

Jean’s about to open his mouth and say something to Marco, anything, _anything_ that will soothe the anxiety curling dully in his chest when the world around him twists and warps and falls to pieces. He’s turning and slamming into the wall and gasping for air because the molecules won’t align right and all he can think is “why the fuck did I take off my helmet.” He’d laugh if the world would stop turning and his ears would stop ringing long enough to allow air to pass into his frantic lungs. It’s like being underwater and he can’t _fucking hear_ and everything is moving and he wonders briefly if he’s actually going to die and—

And then everything stops. Jean wishes he could say that everything is silent when the lightning crashing in his skull clears, but all he can hear is gunfire and screaming and his whole left visual field is red and sticky.

He flops out of the back of the MRAP and pulls out the pistol on his hip. God only fucking knows where his helmet went. He crouches behind the smoking mammoth and doesn’t dare try to peek around it. After making it this far, Jean refuses to die with a bullet between his eyes.

Panic wells up inside him. A few years ago, Jean would have crawled under the vehicle and probably let himself be overcome. Thank god all of his training told him to use his panic to make himself a better soldier. And it works, mostly.

Mostly.

The MRAP lays on its side; how the fuck did they topple a 14-ton chunk of metal and disaster aversion? As Jean tries to figure out how he’s going to make it out, he notices that his left arm is broken and flapping uselessly at his side. “ _So it goes_ ,” he murmurs as he looks it over. The words spiral and repeat themselves in his head, growing in volume until he can hear almost nothing else. No broken bones stabbing through his jacket, so at least he doesn’t have to worry about washing sand out of it. Yet.

The gunfire subsides and Jean takes the opportunity to peek out from behind the gargantuan. He doesn’t have to think twice for either of the two bullets he fires at the guy standing over Marco. He doesn’t have to think twice for either of the two steps he takes toward his downed comrade, panic again obscuring his logical thought processes.

He doesn’t have time to think once when Marco looks at him almost sadly from under the freshly dead and Jean notices the live grenade lying just feet away from his friend.

A few feet—

That’s too close—

too close too close _too close fuck no Marco Marco MARCO_

Boom.

_So it goes_ grinds to a halt and Jean stares from where the blast knocked him on his ass. 

It is eerily quiet then.


	3. Landstuhl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Jean has to bare his soul and expose his neck for every damn doctor in this place to see Marco, he will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *long exhale*

Jean isn’t thinking right. That has to be it. He’s just having another panic attack. He’s got to have a concussion. Concussions cause hallucinations, right? Yeah, definitely.

Something, anything to convince himself that he’s not seeing this right. There’s no way. 

He’s crawling, ignoring the piercing pain from his broken arm. He can’t stand; his legs won’t get under him. He feels like an octopus and he almost laughs.

He finally slogs through the sand, and _god_ it had felt like a mile. It takes almost no effort to throw the dead guy off Marco (and he definitely doesn’t look into that guy’s face and find out that he was a fucking _child_ and he’d killed a child and he’d done it to save Marco but he couldn’t even do that and--)

Breathe. Jean breathes. He rips his eyes away from the bloodied stump that was Marco’s right arm and looks into his one remaining eye. The other half of his head is fucking torn apart and Jean’s chest is tight and he sobs a little bit and—

_Breathe_. Jean breathes. He breathes again as he digs in his pocket for a bandage. He pulls it out and reaches up to Marco’s arm, Marco’s _stump, fuck_ , and he breathes shakily as he pulls out the line for the tourniquet. As he shakily spins the thing, trying not to look at his friend, his comrade, he remembers every training they’d ever received on these damn things. 

They’re built into their fucking uniforms just for such an occasion.

The worst party favor.

Jean breathes deeply and checks that the thing worked. It did.

Fuck.

Jean starts trying to bandage Marco’s stump, but he’s no medic and honestly, he’s a little distracted by Marco’s fucked up _face_ and his twitching chest, and he realizes with horror that Marco’s _awake_.

“Jean,” he rasps, one eye focusing desperately on Jean’s.

“Shut up, Marco,” Jean gasps as he gives up on the binding and just holds the wadded-up bandage to the bloody end of his friend’s arm. Marco’s face is finally starting to bleed, and Jean doesn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified, because he’s not sure that it’s better than the stripped-down view of the underside of his skin he’d been given. 

He wonders if help will ever come. He wonders if the area is even clear. He wonders if Marco’s dying.

When someone pops up in the corner of his vision, he lashes out like a frightened animal. He lands a fist on some asshole’s face and doesn’t feel anything. Hands come down on his shoulders and someone is talking but Jean isn’t listening. He’s throwing his one good fist around and lashing out and he’d _bite_ a motherfucker if he has to, because people are trying to take Marco away from him. He’s not even dead and people are talking and moving him and nothing makes sense.

Levi’s voice breaks through the cloud and Jean stills. “Stupid asshole, let them work. You just clocked the medic trying to save his life.”

Jean realizes Levi has him in some kind of chokehold, babying his busted arm (as much as Levi is capable of babying anything), crouched in the blood-soaked sand a few feet away from them. A few feet, and Jean already feels like Marco’s a million miles away. A sob breaks free from his chest, and he starts to come down from the panic high.

This is about the point where Jean realizes that his arm is _broken_ and that alone feels killer, but his head is throbbing and still not quite clear, and he curls onto himself with a sound akin to a whimper.

“Come on,” Levi says, standing and hauling Jean to his feet. “Your arm looks like shit. You’re going with them.”

It takes him a second to realize that he’s in the medic helicopter with Marco, and suddenly he’s alert again, busting into their work space and demanding to be helpful. The medic he’d right-hooked gives him a dirty look, but hands him a bag filled with saline. “Squeeze that every few seconds.” The bag is cool against Jean’s hand. “Your friend needs it.”

Jean behaves himself, ignoring the pain radiating up from his arm. He stays as out of the way as he can, staring into Marco’s good eye. He’s wearing a mask that’s pumping oxygen and sedatives into his lungs. The brunette is falling deep asleep, but before he goes fully under, he leans his head toward Jean and smiles a little. “It’s okay,” he mouths before his eyes slide shut. Jean wants to pull the mask off and kiss Marco until he comes back to life, but he settles for swallowing the thick lump in his throat and squeezing the bag.

The copter lands at an air base and they’re in the air in less than ten minutes. As shitty as everything was, they’d managed to make it just before this shuttle lifted off. They fly by cover of night, since that’s the best they can hope for in the giant transport plane that takes them far away from the lands of their nightmares.

On their way to Germany, a hurried nurse with a kind smile puts Jean’s arm in a sling. She stitches the cut above his eyebrow shut, too, after making sure to clean out all of the sand and grit. It stings.

Jean won’t leave Marco’s side, even though the brunette is heavily sedated. He’ll be put into a chemical coma when they arrive at Landstuhl, the nurse says as she changes Marco’s fluids. For his pain, you know.

He wishes with all his might that he could hold Marco’s hand, but he just sits cooperatively at the foot of his bed. His eyes don’t leave Marco’s now-bandaged face for the entire long flight. No one asks any questions beyond the perfunctory reports, which Jean gives almost soullessly, refusing to tear his eyes away for fear that they might fall back on an empty bed.

The only reason he allows them to be parted when they finally land in Germany is because Marco needs surgery and Jean needs not surgery. He does, however, need what feels like endless x-rays.

The break was clean, which is about the best anyone can hope for when a flipping MRAP snaps their upper arm like a twig. He grits his teeth through the resetting and the sling, lets the nurse bind his unnoticed broken fingers with a grunt, and immediately asks when he can see Marco.

He doesn’t like the nervous look the nurses exchange.

He likes it even less when a bouncy brunette with a ponytail flounces up to him and plops herself in the chair next to his bed. “Hi, Jean. My name’s Dr. Zoe.”

Jean stares at her. She’s wearing scrubs, but carrying a file folder, and he realizes dimly that he’s about to get a psych evaluation. Probably because of the whole punching thing.

He shakes her hand and answers her questions. They’re brief, and to the point, and he can tell exactly what he’s supposed to say. He tells her the truth anyway, and she seems surprised. He’s honest about the panic attack, about the anxiety he feels being separate from his comrades, about the guy he’d shot. Dr. Zoe takes notes furiously the entire time he talks, and she lets him get it all out.

By the time he’s exhausted, she seems to have enough. “Jean, you know you have a concussion, yeah?” She leans back in her seat, crossing her legs, and Jean nods. “So we’re gonna need to keep you here for a little while, just to make sure. You can probably be on the plane in 36 hours.”

“What about Marco?”

Zoe looks at him for a moment. It’s a moment too long, and they both know it. 

“He’s not stable,” she says delicately. “He might not make the 96.”

Jean’s vision blurs and he buries his face in his good hand. He can feel the panic creeping up his spine again, and his chest tightens and he has to remind himself to _breathe_. He can hear his therapist’s voice telling him to breathe, and then he can hear Marco’s voice telling him to breathe, and then he can’t breathe anymore.

-

Landstuhl is a giant winding maze of US territory in Germany that serves only as the intermediate stop for semi-stable wounded soldiers. They say the hallways are as long as they are because they were built during a time when air raids were a real concern, so if one part of the hospital goes down another part can continue to function.

Landstuhl is not a long-term care facility. The longest they can put you up is 96 hours, usually, and if you’re not ready to go by then you never will be.

Every bed there is a self-sustaining ICU, with all the beeps and gadgets piled on a rack above the patient. 

The second you’re good to make the long flight back stateside, you better go. 

The 96 is a real threat that haunts soldiers everywhere they go, Germany or Afghanistan. 

-

Dr. Zoe hadn’t wanted to give Jean meds because of the concussion, so the best she could do was guide him through some breathing exercises. By the time he’s finally done sobbing into her lap, he’s exhausted, and he’d really like nothing more than to pass out for a few hours. 

“Just wait a few more, okay?” Hanji says. She’d told him to call her by her first name. She also promised not to tell anyone about his breakdown. “Just a few more hours and then you can sleep all you want.”

Jean kills time by staring at the ceiling and trying desperately to not feel like a lost little boy.

It doesn’t work.

Two hours until he can pass out, Hanji had said before she left. She hadn’t answered his questions about when Marco would be out of surgery. He finds that no one wants to.

He decides to go for a walk around the hospital, trying to stay out of the way, and definitely not trying to find the surgery wing.

Landstuhl is a labyrinth, though, when you’ve got a concussion. He eventually has to ask for directions to the ORs, and he finds with a sigh that the directions the nurse had given him landed him back at his own bed.

They’re good at their jobs, he decides with a sigh as he sinks back onto the stiff sheets.

Hanji comes back over, less bouncy than before, and performs a basic neurological exam before declaring him cleared for sleep. He’s just glad she hadn’t subjected him to any more scans. It’s not long after his head hits the pillow that he’s blessed with sleep, and some merciful god allows him to sleep dreamlessly.

When he wakes up, he’s been at Landstuhl for around eighteen hours, and he realizes with a jolt that he’s halfway through his stint here and has yet to see Marco. His heart rate picks up before he can think about it, and he has to take a second to calm himself back down. 

Hanji rolls by when he has his face buried in his knees, counting slowly backwards from 20.

For the fourth time.

“Jean,” she says gently, sitting in the chair next to his bed. “Hey, Jean, you there?”

He pokes his head up and runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah.”

“Listen, I want you to talk to someone,” she says gently. Jean watches her face and notes that, despite seeming kind of… weird whenever she’s bouncing around the hospital, she cleans up pretty good when she’s talking to patients. 

“No,” he says. “Where’s Marco? I’ll talk to him.”

She leans back and crosses her legs in the chair. “Did you talk to him before?”

He nods. She blinks. He wonders if she’s putting two and two together.

“I really want you to talk to someone while he’s recovering,” she says. Jean only hears the last word.

“He’s out of surgery?”

“He’s still in the coma,” she sighs. She pulls her hair out of the messy bun it had been in and reties it, scooping up all the hair that had fallen out. “You’re not going to be able to see him yet.”

“Why,” he growls, swinging his feet out of the bed. 

“What would you say to him?”

Jean falters. What could he say? He’s not looking for soothing, he knows Marco needs it way more than he does. He can’t say “I love you” because there are no walls to protect him here. He can’t even look for the warmth that shines out of Marco’s eyes, because one is closed and the other is gone.

Breathe.

“I don’t want to say anything,” he says as he slides his feet into the dorky hospital socks he’d been given. “I just want to be there when he wakes up.”

Hanji looks at him, and he looks back, holding her stare like a challenge. Neither of them say anything for a while.

“I’ll cut you a deal,” she says, almost smiling. “I’ll move you to the bed right next to his.”

Jean’s eyebrows raise, and his heart thrums slightly. “In exchange for what?”

“You have to promise me you’ll talk to someone.” Jean scowls. “And don’t try to find him by yourself, either. This place is bigger than you think.”

He knows that already. The few hours he’d wandered yesterday had only covered the first of three-ish floors, and not even the whole of it. “… Fine,” he mumbles after a pause.

“Great!” She bounces out of the chair, almost falling over, and starts excitedly down the hallway. “We have a psychiatrist, we have group therapy, and we have a few priests. Take your pick.”

Jean wonders if the priests have any experience talking to people when their lives aren’t slipping out of their eyes. “Shrink,” he says, because fuck group therapy. He’s not interested in a group of people staring at him while he explains how he can’t stop replaying that scene in his head whenever he’s awake. 

Probably when he’s asleep, too, if he knows anything about being haunted.

He has to go to the damn shrink first, he discovers with a grimace. Hanji really knows how to string him along. 

Not only does he have to talk to this ass, but the dude’s a _total_ weirdo. Swear to god, the dude _sniffed_ him when they shook hands. Jean really thought that Levi’s group was the weirdest of all of them, but he was clearly mistaken. 

As he sits on the shrink’s couch and starts sullenly stealing Starburst, Hanji murmurs something in the guy’s ear and then turns to Jean. “Okay, I’ll be at the nurse’s station we passed when you’re all done here.”

“I’m all done here,” Jean says, knowing already that it wouldn’t work. Hanji just smiles and trips out of the room.

“So,” the guy—Mike, was it?—starts. “Tell me about what happened.”

Jean raises an eyebrow. “We were on recon. MRAP flipped. Broke my arm. Shot a guy. Came here.” He doesn’t know why he’s being a petulant child, Mike’s only trying to help. But he doesn’t want help. He wants Marco.

“Why did you shoot someone?”

“He was standing over Marco. I think he’s the one that pulled the grenade. Must have tossed it when he fell.”

Mike stares at Jean. “Tell me about it, Jean. Really.”

Jean stares right back at Mike, then sighs. He almost deflates. Picking at the Starburst in his pocket, he stares at the table. “I was checking to see if the coast was clear.” Already Mike’s pen is going; it’s one of those little plastic ballpoints that always ends up lost two hours after you use it for the first time. “I saw Marco on the ground, and this guy standing over him. He wasn’t wearing fatigues, so I knew he was bad news.” Jean pauses again. He can’t keep the waver out of his voice when he continues. “He had an AK strapped to his back, but I didn’t look at his hands. I just… I just shot.”

This pause is longer, and definitely loaded. His gaze is burning a hole in the table, and he can feel the sting of tears coming. Fuck.

“He went down. I looked at Marco. The guy landed on top of him, but I could see his face. Marco’s face, I mean. He looked… he looked like he wanted to tell me that it’s okay.” His voice cracks, and he clears his throat. His left hand wants to twitch, to fidget, but the twinges from his upper arm discourage it. “He always gets that look when he tells me it’s okay.”

Mike is still quiet, almost hiding in his shaggy blonde hair. Obviously not an army shrink. Probably a stateside import. 

“I saw the grenade,” Jean continues, picking at a spare thread on his hospital-issued pants with trembling fingers. “I saw there was no pin in it. I tried to get over to him, to pull him away. It went off.”

Jean stops, breathing a little harder, and Mike speaks for the first time in a while. “Deep breaths,” he murmurs, flipping to the next page of his notebook. “Do you need to take a break?”

Taking a break means this would take longer, Jean thinks. He closes his eyes, counts backwards from twenty, manages to control himself by eight, and shakes his head. No delays. Marco needs him.

“I crawled over. The blast knocked me down. I think I was already having a panic attack.”

“Have you had them before?”

Jean nods. He refuses to look up, to see the pity or the doubt he’s sure are pasted all over this guy’s face. “I pulled the dead guy off Marco. I think he was probably about fifteen.”

Mike’s pen pauses. Jean closes his eyes. He knows that his voice betrayed the pain hidden under that semi-casual statement. 

And just like that, Jean remembers that he’d shot that guy. That _kid_. That kid that was probably fifteen that may not have even been holding anything. He replays in his mind the way his scrawny body had jolted first, and then again when the second bullet blew his eye out the front of his skull, escorted by squishy pink barely formed brains. He plays it again and again and his finger twitches on the imaginary trigger and he’s already sweating, and it’s impossible to count back from twenty when that kid’s childhood got ejected from his face.

Mike hands him a little trash can just in time for Jean to violently empty the sparse contents of his stomach into it, sobbing and gasping and coughing. He shudders into the thing, holding it close, before letting it go and dropping it on the floor next to him. That cup of water hadn’t been there a second ago, but Jean drains it in a few deep gulps. 

They don’t talk for a few seconds, but Jean’s a mess anyway, trying desperately to calm his raging thoughts. 

“Jean,” Mike says, leaning forward. He looks eerily calm. Jean wonders how he must look; pale, sweaty, bags under his eyes, curled over his stomach in an attempt to escape his own mind. “Jean, breathe.”

“I’m sorry,” Jean mumbles, lowering his eyes to the table once more. He’s not entirely convinced that it’s directed at Mike. A sob escapes his lips and he repeats the words softly, again and again.

Mike doesn’t let him go after that. He says something about needing to talk about this, to come to terms with it, but Jean can’t really hear him. His eyes trace the grain in the table, watching it duck and move around his vision, swimming with tears. 

“I can’t make you talk about this,” Mike says softly, ever patient. “I can’t make you do this with me. But talk about it with someone.” Jean’s eyes snap back up to Mike’s.

“Can… can I go see him now?”

“I won’t make you stay here any longer,” Mike promises, standing and loosening his tie. “Come on.”

Jean clumsily ties off the bag in the trash can, even though Mike says he doesn’t have to, and follows the man meekly. He doesn’t listen when Mike and Hanji converse softly, not until Hanji’s hand lands softly on his shoulder and he startles out of the clouds. She smiles at him and says, “Let’s go see him.”

Marco’s there somewhere, Jean wants to believe when he stops in front of his bed. He’s somewhere under all those machines, under all the IV bags, under all the bandages and tubes and stitches. 

The mess beeps and boops and Jean just stares at it desperately, wishing his own breaths didn’t sound so loud in his ears. Marco’s under all that somewhere.

Jean turns and looks at Hanji, knowing that his face betrays everything he can’t bring himself to say, and she actually hugs him. He stares at the floor over her shoulder, feeling her arms around him, hearing her murmuring in his ear, but he doesn’t understand any of it. Even after she lets go and steers him to sit on the bed to Marco’s left, even after she slides a glass of water into his hands and tells him to get some rest, even after he listens to those machines chirp into the silence for what feels like an age, he doesn’t understand it.

His eyes move to Marco’s face, mostly obscured by the tube down his throat, his eye closed almost peacefully, and he understands it even less.

What are they fighting for?


	4. Graceland

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are looking up, but there's room for improvement.

When Jean sleeps, it’s fitful and terrified. He can’t stay asleep for more than an hour at a time without jolting awake, covered in sweat and half-screaming. Passing nurses stop to hold him down and take his vitals and consult his chart. He fights them off each time, each time growing more and more exhausted, until finally he just gives up on sleep.

He slides into the chair between their beds and watches Marco’s chest rise and fall with the hushed ‘whuff’ of the ventilator. People in comas can’t breathe, apparently.

Hanji rolls by and checks on them both, and Jean looks at her hopelessly. His arm hurts, but he doesn’t say anything, because it’s keeping him awake. 

“You’re almost up, you know,” Hanji says quietly as she changes Jean’s IV bags. They’ve stopped filling him with monstrous amounts of antibiotics since he isn’t showing any signs of infection, but they won’t stop pumping him with fluids and nutrients, even though he’s giving some pretense of eating the shitty hospital food when it’s presented. He knows starving himself won’t do any good. Hanji startles him a little when she speaks again. “I don’t have a good reason to keep you here past your 36.”

“I’m not leaving without him,” Jean says as firmly as he thinks he can. “I’ll hide.”

Hanji laughs a little and sits on Jean’s unoccupied bed, crossing her legs. “Listen, Mike finished up his eval, so your file’s pretty much good to go back stateside. And I know where all the best napping closets are, so don’t play this game with me. I’ve been coming here every summer for the last seven years, you can’t outrun me.”

Jean grumbles and slumps in his seat, then winces when his busted arm complains. “Aren’t you guys supposed to debrief me after an eval or whatever?”

Hanji tilts her head, resting her hands on her knees. “Is that what you want? We usually save it for the home base docs.”

“It’ll take a while, right?”

Hanji’s shrewd eyes narrow slightly, but a smile crooks her lips a little. “Well, Mike’s schedule’s pretty full… he can probably squeeze you in at five.” She looks at her watch, then at a little calendar stuffed in her scrubs pocket. “Then your plane leaves at 6 am sharp.”

Jean turns toward Hanji and looks her in the eye. “What kind of hell do I have to raise to get delayed, Hanji?”

The brunette looks at Jean and considers him for a moment. “None,” she says finally. “But you’re too weak to manage useful volunteer work. If you try to raise hell, you’re not going to get the response you want,” she continues seriously. “They’ll just belt you to the bus and slap a crazy tag on you.”

Slumping back into his chair, Jean runs a hand through his hair. A million ideas run through his head, but he can see how all of them would end badly. 

“Who has power of attorney for him?” Hanji muses quietly, looking over her shoulder.

Jean perks up. “Um, I’m not sure. His mother is listed as his emergency contact.”

“Have you met her?”

“… No,” Jean says. “And I don’t know if she knows about any of this.” He doesn’t just mean the accident. 

Hanji purses her lips and hops off of Jean’s bed. She pulls Marco’s (rather thick) chart off the end of his bed and peruses it. “I can’t really talk to you about any of this,” she says carefully. “Doctor-patient confidentiality and all that.” She looks up at Jean for a moment, then back at the chart. She turns her back and mumbles to herself. When she stiffens slightly, Jean leans forward, but Hanji just slides the chart back onto its hook and trips down the hallway, a little faster than her usual pace.

Jean isn’t sure what she’s cooking up, but he really hopes it pans out. His gaze returns to Marco’s bandaged face. His freckles stand out harshly against his pallor. The sight makes Jean think of all the times he’d admired him before, tanned dark from the Middle-Eastern sun. Marco’s skin darkened sweetly and evenly, and the color looked so good on him. Jean just… burned, like a lobster, no matter how much or how little sun they got. 

Now Marco’s paler than Jean, just a little sweaty, and covered with wires and machines and a mask and tubes and Jean kind of wants to scream again. He breathes, though, and finds that his panic is becoming easier to control now. He wonders briefly if there’s anything suspicious in his IV bag. 

Hanji reappears to his left and startles him out of his thoughts for what feels like the thousandth time. She looks a little excited, and it’s an expression that almost seems out of place in this hellhole. “Listen, his family’s being flown up here, since they wanted to see him. His mother specifically asked to talk to you when they arrive, so there’s not really any way I can discharge you.” She puffs her chest out, a little proudly, but then looks back at Marco and deflates. She blinks slowly, then looks back at Jean and smiles. “I’m so sorry, but you’re going to have to stay here, at least until the family arrives tomorrow.”

Jean blinks at Hanji, then smiles weakly. He knows that she tried for him, and it really touches his heart.

He also knows that they only fly the family out when things are looking hopeless.

Jean wonders what Hanji told Marco’s family, and really hopes that whatever it was was a lie.

“You should call your family too,” Hanji says, laying a gentle hand on Jean’s shoulder. Even through his flimsy hospital shirt, her fingers are freezing. He nods.

“Do you have a phone I could use?”

She nods and grabs his good hand, tugging him out of his chair and down the hallway.

They pass a long series of empty beds and a few occupied ones, but Jean doesn’t make eye contact with anyone. He’s just kind of preparing what he wants to say to his dad. His dad, who was so proud of him for enlisting fresh out of high school, prepared to give his life for his country.

Jean wonders what that version of himself looks like, doe-eyed and young, with no idea what war actually looks like.

Hanji pushes him into a chair behind the nurse’s station and points out the directions for dialing to America. He thanks her, and proceeds to stare at the phone for a few minutes.

When he finally gets himself together, Jean stuffs the phone between his good shoulder and his ear and follows the directions until he’s pressing numbers he’s long since memorized. The phone rings a few times before his dad picks up.

“Kirschtein,” comes the rough grumble, thick with a first-generation German accent. Jean tears up a little.

“Hey, dad.”

“God, Jean?” Jean listens to the rustle on the other line. “Son, oh my god. It’s been a while. Are you okay? Did you get your mom’s packages?”

Jean squeezes his eyes shut and thinks about the little boxes of coffee and treats and photos his mother had been sending. “Yeah.” His voice wavers. “Yeah, I got them, dad.”

A pause. “Are you okay?”

“No.”

He can hear his dad swallow. Jean rubs his sweaty palm on his thigh, then leans his forehead against the counter, blonde hair spilling over the top a little. “Is it bad?”

“I’m not that bad. Broken arm. I’m coming home soon, they don’t want me if I can’t shoot.”

His dad lets out a long sigh. “Thank god,” he says. He repeats it a few times, and Jean can almost see his greying moustache twitching.

They’re silent for a long moment, and Jean looks around at the busy nurses moving through the station. He swallows, then asks his father in German, _“Is mom home?”_

A pause. Jean only speaks German to his family, who had moved to America from Germany. Even then it’s only when something serious is happening.

 _“Yeah,”_ comes the reply, his dad’s voice rough as they switch languages.

_“Can you put her on speaker?”_

_“Sure,”_ his father says after a pause, and he hears the rustling of the phone hitting the table. A click, and more rustling as his parents squish closer to the phone’s base. _“You there?”_

“Yeah,” Jean mumbles, looking around again at the nurses. No one seems to be paying him any mind. _“Hi, mom,”_ he continues, and he can hear his mother’s hurried breaths.

 _“Jean, what’s going on?”_ His mother has always been one to get straight to the point. 

_“I’m fine, ma. But I’m staying here for a few extra days before I come back.”_

_“Why? Are you hurt?”_

Jean takes a deep breath and squeezes the phone. _“The person I love got hurt,”_ he says finally, his voice cracking. 

He’s never gotten around to having this conversation with them. All their Skype chats were just updates, and they were few and far between. 

_“My god,”_ his mother gasps, and he can imagine her slender hand rising to her chest. _“I didn’t even know… what’s her name? Is she alright?”_

Jean licks his lips and swallows. His heart beats a little faster. _“Mom… sorry,”_ he says, voice cracking again. _“It’s a guy. He’s not okay. His name is Marco Bodt, and I love him more than anything, so please understand why I have to stay here. Please.”_ Tears slip down Jean’s long nose, and he squeezes his eyes shut again. 

A long pause, then a brief chuckle from his father. _“Son, you really think we wouldn’t understand?”_

Jean’s breath leaves with a whoosh, and he stares wide-eyed at the pad of post-its in front of him. _“What?”_

Jean’s mother sighs, and he can hear her cracking her knuckles. A nervous habit, he’d picked it up in middle school as well. She speaks up then. _“Jean, your sister has enough children for the both of you.”_ Another pause, and Jean thinks about that. _“We just want you to be happy. We’ll be praying for Marco.”_

Jean’s eyes slide closed again, and the chilly tension that had filled his chest melts away. 

_“When will you be home?”_

_“I don’t know… they say he’s bad,”_ Jean says slowly, willing himself to breathe evenly. _“I’m staying to talk to his parents at least. I’m hoping another two days before we fly back.”_

 _“When you come home,”_ his father says, leaning closer to the phone. _“Bring him with you when you can. I want to shake his hand in person, so make sure you take good care of him.”_

Jean laughs, and it feels real for the first time in a long while. _“Okay, dad,”_ he says. _“Thank you. I love you guys.”_

 _“We love you too, son,”_ comes the gruff response, and Jean wonders if his dad is crying. His mother repeats the statement to drive it home.

 _“I’m gonna go back,”_ Jean says, licking his lips and switching back to English. “I’ll see you soon.”

“See you soon, Jean,” his father’s wavering reply comes. Yeah, definitely crying. Jean can imagine his mother patting his hair soothingly, a smile almost warming her narrow face. He makes a small affirmative noise and hangs up with a soft sigh.

Coming out accomplished, he guesses. 

Jean straightens up and stretches his back, looking around. One of the nurses looks down at him and smiles kindly, but doesn’t say anything. It occurs to Jean that they’re in the heart of Germany, and everyone around him probably speaks a bit of German.

Oh well.

He stands and bows awkwardly out of the nurse’s station, turning to go back down the hall to his bed. Mike appears by his side, though, and catches his attention.

“Hey,” the shrink says, nose twitching a little.

“Aah,” Jean says in response. 

“Hanji says you wanted a debrief.”

“Oh,” Jean mumbles, rubbing at the nape of his neck. “Yeah, if you have time.”

“Let’s go to my office,” Mike says, checking his watch. Jean’s not even sure what day it is any more, let alone the time of day. He follows Mike through the maze and back to his makeshift office, taking his seat again and looking around.

Aside from the jar of Starburst, there are bookshelves and a desk, but not much to the room. There’re messy copies of a few reference texts on the desk, and a shiny new copy of another open and rife with post-its. 

Mike sits across the table and pulls out a slim file. Jean assumes it’s his.

“So, I finished the write-up yesterday and ran it by my supervisor.”

“Yeah?”

Mike leans toward Jean a little. “Are you sure you want this right now?”

Jean considers, fingers picking at his pants again. He’s honestly not sure. “Can you give me a light version?”

Mike seems to consider for a second. “There really isn’t one… getting a diagnosis is a hard process. I want to make sure you’re okay with things.”

Jean stares at Mike for a moment, then gives a one-shouldered shrug and sinks into the couch. “Lay it on me, then.”

With a nod, Mike looks down at the file. “I know we didn’t really talk for long yesterday, so I can’t really get into too much detail. I’ll leave that to the big shrinks back home.” Mike looks at Jean through his bangs. “You’re going to have to talk to someone for a few hours when you get home. An anxiety specialist, I think. I know someone good, I can give you their name.”

Jean nods, licking his lips. He’s familiar with the process.

“What I’m concerned about,” Mike says as he closes the file, “Is the possibility of trauma. You know there’s a large incidence of PTSD in war vets, right?” Jean nods. “What I really want is for you to talk to someone. Like I said, it doesn’t have to be me, but I want you to find someone. You need to work through this before it turns into something ugly, okay?” Jean looks up at Mike and finds honest concern there. There’s no hint of anything Jean had suspected him of the other day. He melts a little in his seat and finds himself more open to the idea. 

“I don’t even know where to start,” he says finally.

“A good night’s sleep,” Mike says. “Find someone, be honest about it. Cry.” Jean frowns a little. “No, seriously. Let it all out. You have a lot trapped in there, if I may be so bold. I don’t want to see that turn on you.”

Jean sighs and looks at the ceiling. Everything in this damn place is painted white. He blinks.

“I called my parents earlier,” he tells the ceiling after a while. Jean’s not sure why he’s talking about this with this guy; Mike pulls out his notebook regardless, though, and uncaps a pen.

“About what?”

“Told them I got hurt.” Jean swallows again. “Told them Marco got hurt.”

“What did they say?”

“They said they’d pray for him.”

Mike hums, pen scratching a little on the paper. Jean pauses and wonders how much he should say. Mike takes the burden off of him, though, and asks quietly, “Did you tell them about your relationship to Marco?”

Jean sighs and blinks slowly. It’s a big day for him, going from trying to keep what they have on the down-low to telling everyone. Maybe it’s the threat of losing Marco, the need to have everyone else understand too. He clenches and unclenches his fist a few times. “Yeah,” he says finally. “I did. They’re okay with it.”

“Good,” is Mike’s reply, and Jean honestly believes the relief in the man’s voice. “That’s good.”

Jean looks at Mike’s smiling face for a few moments, trying to figure out how to phrase his next question. Again, Mike takes care of it for him. This guy’s honestly something else. “They repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell a while ago, remember?” Mike sighs and leans back in his chair. “It was horse shit anyway, if you’ll excuse my language. Love is love and there’s nothing wrong with consenting adults doing what people do best.”

Jean smiles and runs his hand through his hair. Mike seems unexpectedly optimistic. They sit in comfortable silence, the air between them so different from yesterday. 

“Thanks,” Jean says finally, standing and extending his hand. Mike stands as well and shakes his hand firmly. 

Jean leaves Mike’s office feeling just a little better. All that’s left is for Marco to join the feel-good party and everything might feel right, finally.

With a sigh, Jean slides his tired body into the bed beside Marco and rolls onto his good right side, facing his friend. No, his lover. With a pang, Jean realizes he’d never gotten the chance to ask Marco to be his, for real. He listens to the beeps and whooshes and studies Marco’s relaxed face.

“Hey,” Jean says finally. “I know you’re in there somewhere.”

Beep, boop, whoosh. 

“Your family’s being flown up here. We’re in Germany. You know, Landstuhl.”

Whoosh, beep. 

“You have to make your 96, man. I’m getting tired of being here. It smells weird.”

Beep, boop.

“I know. I mean, take your time and all, but not too long.”

Whoosh, beep, boop, whoosh.

Jean pauses. “I told my parents. About us.”

Beep, beep, boop. Whoosh.

“They’re okay with it.” Jean laughs a little and tugs his blanket up to his shoulder, peering at Marco over the thin fabric. “I don’t know if you ever told your parents, so I won’t say anything.” He pauses, looks around, and turns a little red. “Even if I want to run through these damn boring hallways and scream it.”

Beep. Boop, whoosh.

“I love you, Marco Bodt. So you better fucking survive this so I can marry the shit out of you.”

Beep, beep, boop, whoosh. Jean swears the beep picks up just a tick. He nibbles on the edge of his blanket, then makes a face at the taste and drops it. He wants to hold Marco, to touch him, to kiss him, but the rack above him almost makes a force field around him, and Jean’s not willing to do anything to disrupt his lover’s recovery, even by a microscopic amount.

When Jean slips into sleep, it’s blissfully dream-free again.

Hanji stirs him awake some time later with a soft, tired smile on her face. “Hey, Marco’s parents just landed at the airbase.” Jean sits up and rubs his eye. 

“Do you ever sleep?”

“Why would I sleep when there’s a coffee maker at every nurse station?”

Jean shakes his head and slides out of bed. He scratches at the stubble growing in and winces. “How long have I been here?”

Hanji checks her little notebook. “38 hours,” she replies, smiling up at him. “And you smell like it, too.”

With a flush, Jean runs his hands through his grimy-feeling hair. Yeah, sounds about right. It’s felt like a year, though, what with every hour being action-packed. “Can I shower?”

“Please do,” Hanji says, laughing a little. “Follow me.”

She shows him to the showers and hands him a little pre-packed shower kit and a change of clothes. Everything, he notices, is designed to be openable with one hand. Despite the ease of use, though, showering is something of a hassle. He has to switch to some dumb shower sling, which is a pain in the ass in itself. Showering one-handed isn’t that bad, though, even with having to be extra delicate around his broken parts. He cleans himself up, shaves carefully, runs a comb through his hair, bangs his splinted fingers against a sink and curses colorfully, and changes into his regular sling and fresh clothes. Brushing his teeth has never felt so amazing.

By the time he sinks back into the chair next to his bed, a nurse runs by and informs him that Marco’s parents have finally hit the hospital. Jean stands awkwardly and rubs his sweaty palm against his thigh. He then realizes that he’s not sure if he should be standing or sitting; Marco’s parents came to see Marco, not his significantly less banged-up squad mate. But just sitting would be impolite. However, standing there awkwardly and possibly watching his family cry for an undetermined amount of time sounds much, much worse.

He’s somewhere between sitting and standing when Marco’s family rounds the corner, and by instinct, he snaps to attention, good hand behind his back. He decides to just wait to be addressed, and wonders if maybe he’s being a little cold.

Marco had shared pictures of his family with Jean a long while ago, so Jean knew what to expect. He thinks about how different they all look now; Marco’s mother has grey streaks in her messy black hair, and his huge stepfather has a tight look about his face. Hugh, Marco’s little half-brother, isn’t so little anymore. He’s inherited his father’s tallness, but at this age he just kind of looks like a bean pole. 

A soft sob escapes Alisha Bodt’s mouth, and she covers her lips with a small, trembling hand. Her husband places a soothing hand on her shoulder, and the three of them approach the bed with trepidation. Marco’s mother comes around the bed to Marco’s good side and sinks to her knees. Jean takes a step back and allows her space, still standing straight and waiting to be spoken to. 

“You can relax,” Marco’s monstrous stepdad says quietly, sinking onto Jean’s bed. “We’re no one special.” His dark eyes, rimmed red and sunken with lack of sleep, flick up to Jean’s face.

“I disagree, sir,” Jean says softly, making respectful eye contact. “Sorry, sir.”

Marco’s stepdad, Grant, gives a shaky laugh and laces his fingers together. “Please sit, you’re making me nervous.”

Jean nods and lets loose a little, sinking onto the sheets. It seems a little funny that such a huge guy could be nervous, but that’s the army’s goal. Intimidating at any size.

Jean wonders briefly how Levi and the rest of his squad are doing.

Hugh finally moves from the foot of Marco’s bed and comes to crouch next to his mother, folding his absurdly long limbs into his chest and staring up at his brother.

They sit like this for a while, silent but for the machines keep Marco alive and comatose. Jean rubs his palm on his thigh again.

Finally, Hugh looks at his mother and helps her stand from the floor. She moves to the chair with a sigh and runs her hands down her tired face before pinning Jean with a glance. “Are you Jean Kirschtein?”

“Yes ma’am,” Jean replies, standing again and giving her a salute. Grant’s large hand comes up from behind him and pulls him back onto the bed. 

“Stop that,” he sighs, and Jean nods.

“Sorry, sir. Force of habit.”

Alisha nods. “I know. After Marco’s first tour he came home with a stick up his butt too.” Jean tries not to snort, but he’s taken very much by surprise. Marco’s mother continues unfazed. “Thank you for staying and agreeing to talk to us.”

Jean nods, fighting the urge to fidget a little. He looks up at Hugh, who’s twiddling his fingers and looking from his mother to his brother and back again. “What would you like to ask me?” Jean asks finally, looking back to Alisha. 

Looking over Jean’s shoulder at Grant, Alisha leans her chin on her palm and purses her lips, considering. “I don’t really want to know what happened. When the time comes, I want Marco to tell me himself, or I don’t want to hear it at all.” Jean swallows and licks his lips, fighting the anxiety curling in his stomach. 

There’s a long pause where Alisha just looks Jean over, and Jean feels very self-conscious. The stitches in his forehead are starting to itch, and his arm hurts.

“Marco told us a lot about you, you know,” she says finally. A smile graces her ashen face, and Jean decides that the look suits her much better than the sleep-deprived fear she’d had only a while ago. “He’s… really fond of you.”

Jean swallows again and rubs his palm against his thigh. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“Do you love him too?”

Jean’s world stops for just a second, and he feels the blood rush out of his face. The color returns after a moment and he feels himself turning red. He straightens his spine, though, and puts on a brave face. “Yes, ma’am. With everything I have.”

Alisha nods, and Hugh fidgets next to the bed. Grant exhales slowly behind Jean, then laughs and claps him on the back. “Good,” he says, sounding relieved. “Alisha was worried she was gonna have to kill you for stringing Marco along. You shoulda seen his face when he talked about you on Skype. Really warmed the heart.”

Laughing softly, Jean feels almost dizzy with relief. He turns and offers Grant a smile.

Hanji bobs up to the bed, looking for all the world like she’s about to fall over. “Hi, Bodt family, I presume?” She reaches in and firmly shakes everyone’s hand. “Sorry, Jean, but I gotta ask you to vacate while I talk to the blood relatives.” She looks genuinely sorry and jerks her chin down the hall, toward the nurse’s station. “You can hang out over there if you promise not to get in the way.”

Jean nods and stands, stopping to lean down and murmur in Hanji’s ear, “You have to promise to go to bed after this. You look like shit.” He laughs, dodging her pinching fingers as he leaves.

Turns out, the nurse’s station is really fucking boring. They don’t have any puzzles, and if Jean leans out a little, he can see Hanji talking to the Bodts quickly. She doesn’t look like she’s delivering horrible news, thank god, but there’s a tension in her shoulders that hadn’t been there before. 

Jean makes a few paper airplanes out of post-its and tries to get them into the small trash can at the other end of the station. He’s anxious to return to Marco’s side. 

Mike rolls by and Jean stops him to make small talk, trying to kill time, and the shrink obliges him. Maybe he’s not so much a shrink as a mind-reader, Jean thinks. By the time Hanji comes to collect him, Jean’s bouncing his leg rapidly and trying not to look nervous.

“Okay, you’re good,” Hanji says, smiling. “Oh, and they added you to Marco’s contact list and signed some very important papers for you.”

Jean blinks. “What does that mean?”

“It means I don’t have to kick you out anymore when we’re talking medical stuff,” Hanji says with a smile and a yawn. “You’re basically part of the family now.”

Jean grins widely and shakes Hanji’s hand. “I don’t really know how to thank you.”

Hanji waves her hand, returning his grin, and shrugs. “All in a day’s work. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to retreat to the best nap closet. See ya!”

Watching her hair flounce down the hallway, Jean sighs with relief. If he has to spend any more time in the nurse’s station, he’s sure he’s going to drive someone up the wall. He turns to say goodbye to Mike, but the shrink has already moved on. With a shrug, Jean moves back down the long hallway and approaches Marco’s family again.

“Um,” he says, looking at the floor and scratching the back of his head. “Thank you.”

Alisha smiles a tired smile. “It’s just a formality. You were part of the family already.”

Grant moves over and Jean sits next to him, and they talk quietly for a few hours until Alisha has fallen asleep in the chair next to Marco’s bed and Hugh has started swaying on his feet a little.

“We’ll come back tomorrow,” Grant says, looking rather exhausted himself. “They’re putting us up in a hotel nearby.”

Jean stands and nods, smiling a little. As the Bodts say their sleepy goodnights to Marco, Jean considers something. They've already walked a few feet down the hallway when Jean scrambles to the foot of Marco’s bed and calls out, “Mr. and Mrs. Bodt?”

Grant and Alisha turn, and Hugh raises his eyebrows a little.

Despite Grant’s request, Jean gives them his best salute. “When Marco wakes up, I’d like your blessing to ask him to marry me,” Jean says, his words rushing toward the end as his face turns bright red.

Marco’s parents exchange glances, then smile softly. “I’d like that,” Alisha says. They wave again, and Jean collapses in a relieved heap on his own bed.

He rolls over and looks at Marco again, and he swears the brunette’s cheeks look a little warmer.

“I kinda hope you didn’t hear that,” Jean says finally, eyes moving over Marco’s face. “I probably sounded really lame.”

Marco’s machines continue in their steady rhythm, but if Jean listens really hard, he feels like the ventilator’s whooshes are just a little longer.


	5. Your Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you have to redefine words in order for them to make sense, but 'home' hasn't been a shitty apartment in New York for years.

When Jean wakes up, he takes another shower and goes to see Mike again for a while. He opens up a little, then learns that Mike works at a PTSD specialty clinic in Philadelphia when he’s not here. Mike offers his services to Jean and Marco when they land stateside, and Jean tells him he’ll consider it if they’re in the area for a while. 

Jean roams the hallways for a while, having been freed from his IV and knowing the layout significantly better than the first time he’d tried. He stops to shoot the shit with some nurses for a while. Things almost feel normal. There’s a niggling worry, though, that prevents all of this from feeling like reality; Marco’s still in a coma. 

Nurses come by regularly to check on him and his bandages and his vitals, and Jean feels completely lost every time. He wants to be helpful, but he can’t. He just sits on his bed and watches them work, feeling a little more hopeless every time. 

When Marco’s family comes by again, Jean tries his best to look brave and upbeat, but Alisha shushes him and offers him a hug. Jean remembers vaguely that Marco’s mother is a nurse as well; she’s probably used to people trying to put on brave faces and looking less than convincing. He smiles softly at her in thanks.

“Any news?” Grant takes his seat next to Jean, and Hugh sits delicately on the bed next to his dad. Jean feels like Hugh is a little like Bertholdt; awkward and a little sweaty. That must be why Marco always seemed to understand Bertholdt a little more than Jean could. Jean wonders about his squad again, then shakes his head and turns back to Grant. 

“Not that they’ve told me. Pretty much all I can get is that he’s not getting worse.” Jean looks over at Marco, and his face softens a little. “I feel like he looks a little better, though.”

They turn to look at him, and Alisha hums in agreement. It’s not really hard to look better than Marco had when he’d come in, though. Bandages still cover the skin grafts the surgeons had worked so hard to attach, and most of Marco is still covered by his life-sustaining array, but he undoubtedly looks a little less like a corpse than he had previously.

Jean talks to Marco’s family for a few hours more, and finds that they’re good people. Not that he’d suspected anything less, but still. He tells them about his own family, about how his parents had moved to America when his mother was pregnant with him, and their little apartment in New York that he’d grown up in. 

By the time it’s time for them to leave again, Jean feels like he’s known the Bodts his entire life. He wishes they had met under different circumstances.

He sleeps for a few fitful hours, but for some reason, he finds his dreams haunted. A few false starts and a few nightmares later, Jean wakes up gasping and grasping at his hip, searching for his gun. 

Jean buries his face in his knees again once he’s woken up a little and takes a few deep breaths, walking himself through his breathing exercises for what feels like the thousandth time in the last few days. When his breathing evens out and he doesn’t feel like his heart is going to explode anymore, Jean looks over to Marco’s bed—

And finds a clean, empty bed in its place.

Jean stares, then whips his head to the other side. Nothing there either.

His brain kicks into high gear and he hits the ground running, sprinting down the hall and sliding to a stop in front of the nurse’s station.

“Where is he?!” Jean half-shouts, trying really hard not to scream at the tired-looking nurse at the desk. He doesn’t recognize her.

“Calm down, sir. Who?”

“Marco, Marco Bodt, his bed was right next to mine. Where is he?” Jean’s holding the counter with one sweaty hand, fingers curling under the edge closest to the nurse, and the girl backs up a little.

“Hold on,” she says, looking a little nervous. She turns and whispers quickly to another nurse, who stands and faces Jean.

“Hey, Jean,” he starts, but Jean interrupts.

“Hi, Thomas, where the _fuck_ is Marco?!”

Thomas blinks at Jean. “He’s getting bussed out. They didn’t tell you?”

Jean gapes at the blonde, looking rather like a fish out of water. “ _No,_ ” he manages finally, his voice a little shrill. “What do you mean bussed out? What the hell, Thomas?”

“He’s taking the next shuttle out.” Thomas flicks his eyes down to the computer screen in front of him, clicking a few times. “Yeah, they woke him up and it looks like he’s stable enough to be moved stateside.” The nurse gives Jean a maddening smile. “You’re supposed to be on that shuttle too, but someone was going to come wake you up for boarding in about half an hour.”

“Fuck thank you bye Thomas,” Jean spits as he sprints back to his bed. He curses and tries to shove his legs into the jeans Alisha Bodt had bought him in town the previous day, rolling around on his bed as he bucks his hips into the loose denim with a loud stream of colorful curses. He damns Hanji for not saying anything, and he damns himself for not waking up when Marco’s beeps and boops had been moved, and he damns Thomas for being there. Thomas hollers a vaguely offended ‘oi’ down the hallway, but Jean isn’t listening. He’s shoving his feet into his boots and grabbing his bag and sprinting toward the bussing exit.

As he skids through the automatic doors, he spots the white transport bus immediately and sprints up to the wide-open back door. A teeny tiny redheaded girl smiles up at him, and Jean wonders how the fuck all these people manage to be so damn cheery. “Hi, uh, Jean Kirschtein,” he says quickly, standing on his tiptoes to peek into the bus, searching for Marco.

“Oh, right. Mr Kirschtein, your shoes are untied,” the girl says. Jean looks at her badge.

“Um, P-Petra, hi, is Marco Bodt on this bus yet?”

Wide eyes flick to the clipboard Petra’s holding. “Yes, he is. Tie your boots, please.”

Jean huffs and leans down, dropping his bag, before dimly realizing that he can’t really tie his shoes one-handed. He stares up at her through his bangs, then defiantly shoves his laces into his boots, under his heels. “I hope that’ll suffice,” he says, standing again and throwing his bag into the bus. She stands aside, shrugging a little.

As he hauls himself into the bus, Jean’s heart is hammering. He trips over his bag a little as he moves forward. Bending down to grab it and sling it over his shoulder, Jean slouches under the low ceiling and moves through the bus. So far, he doesn’t recognize anyone. 

He finds Marco right up front behind the driver and collapses next to the brunette’s bed, bag dropping to the floor again with a thud. He scoots forward on his knees, eyes searching Marco’s face.

“Marco…?”

The brunette twitches, and his monitors beep and boop, and his hazy brown eye slides open for the first time in days. Marco looks around for a moment before his gaze lands on Jean’s sweaty face.

“Oh,” Marco sighs, blinking slowly. Jean sobs a little and grabs Marco’s searching fingers, bringing them to his cheek. “Hi,” the brunette says quietly, voice husky from having a tube down his throat for three days.

“Hi,” Jean replies, tears spilling down his cheeks. He scoots over a little to allow Petra to check the straps holding Marco’s bed to the wall of the bus, and they sway when the bus starts toward the airbase.

Marco’s eye flicks back to Jean’s face, and he half-smiles. “What’s up?” the brunette rasps. Jean squeezes his eyes shut for just a moment, pressing a dozen kisses to Marco’s palm. He doesn’t care that he’s crying like a little girl in front of something like half a dozen other army personnel. He doesn’t care that his arm is throbbing from the jostling movements Jean had forced it through. All that matters is strapped safely to the wall of the bus, and Jean sobs into Marco’s hand quietly.

“I had to bunk with your comatose ass,” Jean finally manages, voice thick with tears. He looks up at Marco through swimming vision. “And the best you have for me is ‘what’s up?’”

Marco chuckles dimly, his thumb stroking Jean’s wet cheek. “Sorry,” he finally replies. “I’m a little drugged up.”

Jean reaches over delicately and runs his knuckles over Marco’s cheek. Marco sighs softly and leans into the touch as much as his grafts and bandages will allow. Tears spill over Jean’s cheeks again, pooling in the space between Marco’s palm and his cheek. The bus lurches and leans to the side a bit. 

Marco drifts off, Jean thinks, and he lets him. His eyes don’t leave Marco’s face for the entire bus ride to the airport.

When they arrive, Jean hauls himself off his incredibly stiff knees and almost knocks his skull against the low ceiling. He straps his bag on again and turns to Petra, who had been sitting on the bus’s stairs for the whole ride. “How can I help?” Jean asks, wiping salty tears off of his face. 

Petra smiles softly, though, and shakes her head. “You just relax,” she says, pulling herself to her feet. “We’ve got this under control.”

Regardless, Jean does his best to help where he can, feeling immense relief doing so after the three longest days of his life spent wiling away the time. He wonders where the Bodts are, if they’ve been told, a hundred other things. In a vague attempt to distract himself, he helps the loaders by carrying Marco’s loaded IV stand onto the plane, snapping the thing in at the head of Marco’s bed. He slumps his bag off of his shoulders and throws it under the bed before taking his seat at the foot.

America is twelve hours away, and even then they’re only landing at the Reed Medical Center in D.C. Marco’s family lives in Maine. Jean has every intention of taking Marco there himself.

He drifts off again at some point during the flight, turning awkwardly in his seatbelt to rest his head in his good arm on the bed. Despite the awkward positioning, he sleeps well, knowing that Marco is at least alive and somewhat conscious.

When Jean awakes a few hours later, he finds Marco awake and propped up a little on some pillows, looking mildly disgruntled. Jean is immediately fumbling with his seatbelt, rushing to Marco’s side once more.

“Hi,” he says breathlessly, admittedly a little dizzy from the sudden movement. He reaches down and grabs Marco’s hand, and Marco squeezes his fingers back. Jean notices him glancing around a little, but neither of them say anything. “How are you?”

Marco smiles a little, definitely less pale than the day before but not even close to normal. “I dunno,” he responds, voice still quiet. Jean looks around until he finds what appears to be a small milk crate. He appropriates it as a chair and squats next to Marco, looking up at him. Jean twines their fingers together with a soft smile.

“I missed you,” Jean mumbles, flushing for just a moment at the words. Marco chuckles a little and rubs his thumb over Jean’s knuckles. “Your parents came to see you.”

“Yeah? Did you talk to them?”

Jean nods, leaning up to press a kiss to Marco’s hand. “They’re good people.”

“Thanks.”

Lips still resting against Marco’s hand, Jean peers up at him for a while. Clean white bandages cover the brunette’s eye, forehead, and most of his right cheek, wrapping around his neck and disappearing under the hospital gown he’d apparently been given at some point. Jean looks down and realizes that not only did he neglect to button or zip his pants, his own hospital gown is half-tucked into his boxers. He looks a little ridiculous.

Heaving himself up, Jean squeezes Marco’s fingers and reaches under the bed to grab his bag. There has to be a shirt in here somewhere.

“What happened to your arm?”

Digging deep in the bag, Jean finds what feels like a shirt and tugs it out. Underwear. Damn. 

“Ah, it broke when the MRAP flipped.” Jean stuffs the boxers back into the bag and digs deeper, trying again. This time he manages to fish out a shirt. He leans up and tosses it onto the bed, then reaches behind himself to tug at the gown’s ties.

Marco watches him struggle out of the cheap fabric and laughs when he gets frustrated and just rips it open over his broken arm. 

Jean tosses the gown on Marco’s bed, over his feet, and pulls the shirt over his head. Rather than try to deal with his busted arm, he just leaves it inside. He reaches over to Marco then and pushes his shoulder a little.

The brunette blinks but carefully scoots toward the wall of the plane as much as he can manage, and Jean sinks onto the bed next to him. The arm that he would slide over Marco’s waist is trapped in the sling, so he settles for pushing his good arm under Marco’s head and wiggling closer. Marco sighs contently and closes his eyes, leaning his head comfortably on Jean’s arm.

“Do you remember anything?” Jean wriggles a little closer, until he can press his lips gently to Marco’s ear. 

“Not really… the blast, a little after that, weird dreams… then I woke up here a while ago. Where are we going?”

“Reed, in D.C. What kind of weird dreams?”

Marco makes as much of a face as the bandages will allow, leaning into Jean’s soft nuzzles, and hums. “I guess I don’t really remember them. Just that I had them. I think.” He laughs. “Now I’m not even sure. Maybe it’s the drugs talking.”

Jean pauses, then licks his lips. “Does it hurt?”

“Yes.” Marco pulls no punches. “Yeah, it kind of sucks.” He leans his head toward Jean, who nuzzles gently behind his ear. “And the whole ‘no-arm’ thing is pretty weird, too. Last I remember, I’m pretty sure I had one.”

Jean leans up and looks at Marco’s arm. He notices that now everything from the shoulder down is gone, and wonders what happened to it. Pressing a soft kiss to Marco’s cheek, Jean closes his eyes and sighs quietly. “I’m sorry, Marco.”

Marco glances up at him and quirks his lips. “What for?”

Jean leans back down and presses a thousand kisses to whatever he can reach. “Everything. All this. It’s fucked up, and it’s worse that I can’t figure out what to say.”

“I don’t know what you could say either,” Marco replies quietly. “I guess I’ll just get used to it.”

Jean nods and closes his eyes.

“You know what’s weird?” Marco asks after a while.

“Mm?”

“I can still see stuff. You know, on the right.”

“What?”

Marco nods and gestures a little. “Like… I dunno, it’s weird. It’s just flashes of light and weird colors, but not from anything around us.” He drops his hand onto Jean’s hip, fingers pushing his shirt up enough to trail over warm skin. “My brain probably just doesn’t know what to do with itself. It’s used to seeing, and now it’s not.”

Jean ponders that for a while, face pulling into a slight frown. He tries to imagine it, but can’t. ‘Weird’ is probably a good word for that. He buries his face back into Marco’s hair and sighs. “I really missed you.”

“So you mentioned,” Marco says, and Jean can hear the smile on his voice. His heart aches a little with sweet pain, and with Marco awake and talking to him, any tiny distance between them is too much. He doesn’t want to risk being overbearing, though, not with his healing grafts. Jean’s not really sure how those work, but stretching them at this point sounds like a bad idea. 

“What did my parents say?”

“Mm, a bunch of stuff,” Jean replies, shifting his bum arm a little. Marco shifts to rest the back of his hand on Jean’s side, fingers curling toward his palm. “We talked a lot for the two days I saw them. Just shooting the shit, you know?”

“Did they ask about… us?”

“Mhm.”

“What did you say?” 

Jean grumbles and gently nips at Marco’s ear. “The truth.”

“What did they say?”

“They said it’s okay.”

Marco smiles and sighs. “Good.”

“Oh, that reminds me.”

“Mm?”

Jean tugs his arm out from under Marco’s head and leans up onto his elbow, looking into the brunette’s eye. He realizes that this isn’t the place for a marriage proposal; Marco deserves, like, a fancy restaurant and champagne and shit. Jean bites his lip, watching Marco’s confused face, and leans down to kiss the brunette on the nose.

“Jean?”

“I love you, Marco.” Marco’s eye widens a little, a blush spreading over his face. He bites his lip, so Jean continues, rubbing their noses together gently. “I love you so much it drives me crazy. I was going nuts without you. So, uh… I was wondering if you’d stay with me. Together.”

Lame.

Marco laughs, his smile wrinkling the corner of his eye, and he reaches up to twist his fingers into Jean’s messy hair. “Yeah,” he finally responds as he pulls Jean into a soft kiss. Jean melts against his lips and tilts his head to deepen the kiss, just enough to try to start making up for lost time.

“Get a room!” That voice is eerily familiar. Jean casts a filthy look over his shoulder to the source of the voice a few beds down, finding a widely-grinning Connie sitting upright against the plane wall. 

“The fuck did you do?”

Connie points to his leg sheepishly; he’s wearing one of those big braces around his right knee. “Broke it. I came in last night and got patched up.”

Jean tries to remember if he’d seen Connie on the bus. The baldy nerd is hard to miss. He must have been on one of the other buses. Probably the short bus.

“Fuck off,” Jean replies, returning to his previous cuddling position and getting comfortable. 

“Aw, come on, guys. I’m bored!”

Jean only grumbles.

The telltale clack of crutches signals Connie’s arrival, though, and he collapses with a ‘whuff’ into the chair.

“How’re you doing, Marco?”

“Ehh, not too terrible,” the brunette replies, shifting a little on the bed. “How about you?”

“Nah, man,” Connie replies, rubbing a hand over his buzzed hair. “Don’t ask me. It’s nothing. Stupid, actually. I’ll tell you some other time.”

Jean lets his eyes slide shut, listening vaguely to Connie updating them on the rest of the squad. It sounds like after the raid, another vehicle came and picked everyone else up. At Levi’s stern and somewhat threatening request, they’d been taken back to camp to regroup and recover. Jean feels himself drifting off again, especially with Marco idly petting his thigh, so he lets go and falls into an easy, deep sleep. 

The sound of Petra and Marco talking quietly breaks him out of a rather good dream about warm sunlight on grassy hills, so Jean grumps and nuzzles further into Marco, as if expecting to find that serene landscape behind the brunette’s ear or something. Petra chuckles softly somewhere nearby and walks away.

“You know you snore?”

Jean groans. “Mean.”

“It’s true. Right in my ear. I should’ve punched you in the bum arm.”

Not even dignifying that with a response, Jean moves to roll onto his back, having apparently forgotten that they’re both crammed on a tiny hospital bed. The only thing that saves him from banging his ass off the floor considerably is his bag, which he’d neglected to put back under the bed. 

“We’re landing soon, they said,” comes Marco’s voice from the bed, definitely sounding amused. 

“How are we getting to Maine?” Jean stands with a groan, stretching as best he can. The day he can move his arm again is going to be glorious, he thinks for a moment. A slight pang of guilt, then. Jean makes a mental note to never complain about his broken but intact arm to Marco.

“Ah, I have to stay at Reed for a few weeks,” Marco says. He sounds tired. Jean wonders if he’d slept too, or just stayed awake and stared at the ceiling. “They want to make sure that the grafts take, you know?”

Jean nods, turning back to Marco. He smiles despite himself and leans over to kiss the brunette on the cheek. 

“What’s got you in such a good mood?”

Jean drops small kisses along Marco’s cheekbone. “Slept well.” Another kiss, this one loud and obnoxious and solely for the purpose of making Marco laugh. It works. “Did you sleep?”

“A little,” he replies, smiling up at Jean.

Jean leans back up and runs a hand through his bed-amplified hair. “Gonna take a leak, I’ll be back.” As he turns to leave, he looks over at Marco again, almost as if afraid that the brunette might disappear from under him again. Jean really hopes that paranoia fades, or Marco might kill him. 

The plane isn’t like passenger planes; it’s more like a cargo ship. Jean looks around at all the bandaged faces and broken limbs and feels vaguely like they’re being shipped to the island of misfit toys.

When Jean returns to Marco’s bed, Petra is there again, checking his vitals and chatting sunnily with him, and seeing a smile on Marco’s face again fills Jean’s chest with warmth. He moseys up beside Petra and gives her a half-smile, reaching down to take Marco’s hand again. Getting him to ever let go is probably going to be next to impossible. 

“Oh, Mr Kirschtein,” Petra says, giving him a wide grin. 

Jean raises an eyebrow. “Please, just Jean is okay.” He’s fairly sure they’re around the same age, anyway.

“You’re not an army nurse, are you,” Marco asks, smiling up at Jean. Petra is at the head of his bed, so turning to look at her isn’t really doable. 

“No,” she replies, moving back to Marco’s side after adjusting his IVs. “I’m volunteering before I start my new job.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ll be a nurse in the NICU at Johns Hopkins,” she says, puffing her chest out proudly. Jean kind of stares at her. “Neonatal intensive care unit,” she provides, resting her hands in her hoodie pockets. “I’ll be helping sick infants, basically.” 

“Good for you,” Marco says kindly, smiling up at her. She bites her lip a little, then bids them farewell after instructing Jean to sit and put on his seatbelt. As she walks away, Marco looks back to Jean. “She’s nice.”

Jean grunts and procrastinates going back to his seat, pretending to adjust his bag under Marco’s bed with his foot.

“Hey, Jean.”

“Mm?”

Marco smiles at Jean, then squeezes his fingers. “Thank you.”

Jean doesn’t have to ask what for.

Previously, he’d been all about being super-secretive with their relationship. What they had was special, and they both knew it, and it had been going on for months before this last recon mission. Still, something in Jean just didn’t want the rest of the squad to know. Like there was any hiding anything from them. Anyway, it was a pride thing.

Seeing as Jean had been facing the possibility of a future without Marco for days, he’d decided to strip off his pride and leave it somewhere. He doesn’t need it, and neither does Marco.

Jean smiles at Marco, a real smile, and moves to buckle himself into the seat at the foot of the bed. The captain slurs into the intercom, telling them that it’s hot and shitty in D.C. (big surprise), and to obey their transport orders. Marco is to be bussed to Reed; Jean doesn’t care where he’s supposed to go, because the only place he belongs is wherever Marco goes.

Luckily, he has an old friend that lives in D.C. that he can stay with. And by ‘friend’ he means ‘Armin’s empty apartment that he still has a spare key to.’ They’d exchanged keys after their first tour together just in case anything ever happened, with the agreement that whoever survived would go to the other’s apartment and eliminate anything embarrassing before parents could find it. 

When they land, Jean asserts himself onto the bus that’s carrying Marco to Reed, and Petra casually looks the other way as he does so. 

As the bus starts off toward their destination, Jean realizes that he’d forgotten his tradition of kissing stateside soil immediately upon setting foot there. Previously, he’d done it as a symbolic thing; ‘I’m here, I’m home, I’m alive, and I pray to God I’ll never have to leave you again.’

Holding onto a support bar hanging from the ceiling, he leans down and kisses an exhausted-looking Marco instead. The meaning is the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long ;;
> 
> also i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com) but i switched it from my secondary to my primary, so if you followed me recently, please refollow/unfollow the other one ;; i'm so sorry


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